The Bay Area Reporter - May 12, 2000
Terry Beswick

South African President Thabo Mbeki has appointed a 33-member panel, including University of California, Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg and Bay Area biochemist David Rasnick, both leading HIV dissidents in the U.S.

Although the presidential advisory board, which held its first meeting in Pretoria last weekend, is charged with looking at a wide range of issues confronting the African country as it attempts to curtail its devastating AIDS epidemic û including the best treatments for those living with disease û about half of the panel's members believe that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but rather by other conditions, such as poverty, drug use, malnutrition, and other infections. The makeup of the panel virtually guarantees a heavy focus on the HIV/AIDS connection, and a committee has already been established to design new experiments to test whether HIV causes AIDS in the coming months.

Mbeki has been widely criticized among scientists around the world for focusing attention on the issue, particularly in light of his executive decision not to provide the standard AIDS drug AZT to HIV-positive pregnant women, suggesting that the drug was too toxic and too expensive. Research has conclusively shown that the drug effectively reduces perinatal transmission of HIV from a mother to her infant. The decision is considered particularly troubling in light of a recent report that the South African government inexplicably failed to spend $6.2 million of the $17 million the country budgeted to fight AIDS in 1999.

Many of the panelists hold that toxicities of HIV treatments developed in Western countries is what kills people, rather than the primary infection itself.

Mbeki's controversial inquiry has gained prominent attention from researchers throughout the world planning to attend the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, scheduled to be held in the Indian Ocean city of Durban, South Africa in July. Convened every two years in a different host country, the conference is considered the most prestigious meeting of AIDS scientists. Some scientists are calling for a boycott of the conference due to concerns that the controversy will overwhelm the agenda.

"No matter where they go in that debate, the only possible outcome is deadlock," commented Martin Delaney, founding director of Project Inform, a San Francisco-based treatment education and advocacy organization for people with HIV and AIDS. Delaney compared the views of Duesberg and other HIV dissidents to a "religious or cult belief," that will not be changed no matter what evidence is presented.

Local AIDS dissident David Pasquarelli of ACT UP/San Francisco, however, lauded Mbeki's actions.

"We consider this to be a victory. After two decades of denial that AIDS can't be caused by a virus, we now have a panel looking into the matter," Pasquarelli said. "This is the beginning of the end."

Mbeki has formally communicated with President Bill Clinton about his HIV concerns by diplomatic envoy, comparing scientific criticism of his inquiry to the Spanish Inquisition; shortly thereafter, the U.S. declared the AIDS pandemic a threat to national security, though the relationship between the two events is not clear. Mbeki's first state visit to the U.S. is scheduled for May 20; while his country is in the midst of a worsening economic crisis and a threatened worker's strike. Some fear that the HIV controversy will overshadow these concerns during the talks.

At the Pretoria meeting, however, Mbeki appeared to back down from previous assertions that the cause of AIDS is in question. According to the New York Times, the president said that he accepted the widely-held scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS, but had become troubled by the fact that the epidemic in his country is of a different subtype than that found in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Japan, and the Caribbean, where HIV-1 Subtype B is most common and is transmitted primarily through homosexual contact and injection drug use.

In South Africa and India, HIV-1 Subtype C is most prevalent, and appears to be more infectious and with a greater propensity for heterosexual transmission.

"We were looking for an answer because all of the information that has been communicated says in reality that we are faced with a catastrophe," Mbeki was quoted by the Reuters news service. "And you can't respond to a catastrophe by saying, 'I will merely do what is routine.'"

Mbeki said that he often calls his health minister when he does not understand a medical term as he conducts his research.

While there was praise in some quarters for the depth of Mbeki's interest in the science of HIV, others suggested that politicians should leave science to the scientists, and that South Africa's second president since the end of apartheid was indulging in micromanagement.

"An analogy for me would be if [President] Bill Clinton decided to hold off a shuttle mission so he could personally decide whether or not the proper rocket fuel boosters were being used," said Delaney.

The United Nations estimates that 33.6 million people worldwide are living with HIV, 70 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.

For an extensive list of Internet links on HIV/AIDS connection, go to http://www.niaid.nih.gov/spotlight/hiv00/default.htm
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